Hard to Love

I preached the following homily on this day back in 1992.


I find the story of the cleansing of the leper the most dramatic and touching of the gospel healing narratives.

Consider the leper's situation. Society completely ostracized him. He could not be touched. He could not enter the city. He could not worship in the Temple.

Worse yet, he was considered a sinner. That was the only way they could imagine such a hideous diseas afflicting someone. Considering them sinners also justified not treating them as members of God's chosen people. Treating lepers as sinners made it easier not to feel compassion for them and so lock them out of view.

But Jesus takes this mentality and turns it on its head. In cleansing the leper, Jesus shows that being diseased and being a sinner were not reasons to shut others out but all the more reason to reach out to them.

I have never met a leper, but I once met a young boy who caused as much disgust in me. He was a camper one summer at our diocesan youth camp. His skin was pale - almost yellow - and his eyes were red and reptilian. I didn't like the way he talked or walked. I didn't even like his name. In short, he embodied everything I find repulsive.

One evening I was venting my loathing of him to another counsellor when she remarked, "Yes, he is hard to love."

That response stung me. Her comment turned my perception of the situation on its head. I was using my personal feelings of disgust to justify avoiding him and treating him harshly, while she saw it as a reason to love him all the more.

Any authentic healing is rooted in reconciliation. Jesus has called each of us to be ministers of that reconciliation. But the reconciliation that is of primary importance for our ministry is probably not that sinners be reconciled to God - though that is certainly important - but that we reconcile ourselves with sinners. Unless we get over the personal disgust or antipathy we may feel for them, we will never care enough to reach out to them with the good news of forgiveness. For those whom we find "hard to love" are the ones who are in most need of our love and the ones God seeks most desperately.